Quote: Filling a selection with a gradient. The sort of fill shown you can get from the gradient tool with the Shaped(angular) option but it needs adjusting. There is a center point slider, find it and drag to near one end. Use foreground to background. The FG / BG colours do matter, experiment.
A bit more shape / shading. Try a bump map Filters -> Map -> Bump Map and use the filled shape as its own bumpmap. The Azimuth value determines the light direction. Play around with the other sliders.
I tried the Shaped(angular) option but I cannot find the center point slider, as soon as I drag the line to make the gradient, it just does it (always the same no matter where it is). And it seems to me to go from the center outwards, while I was looking more for, like in the image below, something was went from the bottom of the curve and following it.
The bump map gives interesting results, and may be used, but it still doesn't give me a gradient that espouses certain shapes not present in the gradient tool option.
EDIT: Yes, the outline without anti-aliasis was deliberate.